MAKING SENSE

State of the Union...failure

Our failure in chief gave us his annual blurred vision of America again last week.

Based on his State of the Union message, Barack Obama's eyesight is as ideologically impaired as ever.

Despite four years of failure, he still sees only one road America can go down to regain its economic health. Not down the capitalist road of free enterprise and liberty that made us the richest country in history.

He wants to continue down the socialist road to more federal government - which means more Obama taxes, more Obama spending, more Obama debt and more Obama government programs to fix problems government programs caused in the first place.

The president and his hallucinating idolaters in the mainstream liberal media think his failed policies and bad ideas will work their magic if only we try them for another four years.

But look at reality. Look at the unemployment rates in 2008 and 2012. Despite trillions of federal spending, they're essentially the same.

Look at the middle class. The president keeps boasting about how he's going to use the federal government to help them. The reality is that the middle class is being devastated by his administration.

Starting Jan. 1, 2013, Americans with jobs have had their disposable incomes cut 2 percent because Social Security taxes were returned to their normal level.

And because of the rules under Obamacare, millions of employees are going to have their hours cut by employers who can't afford to pay every full-time worker's health care.

That speech last week was a national joke. As usual, it was mostly hot air, bad ideas and tired platitudes. It delivered nothing sensible, newsworthy or brave.

What if Obama had turned to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and said, "Hey Harry, how about passing a federal budget this year? I'm tired of funding the government with continuing resolutions."

What if he had said, "Sorry, my Green friends, you're living in a dream world. We need the Keystone Pipeline and I'm going to do everything I can to speed up its construction."

What if Obama had turned to the survivors of deadly gun violence in the audience and said, "I am not going to push for tougher new gun control laws because I know they would have done nothing to save your loved ones from being murdered."

No chance. Instead, the president stuck to his socialist script and threatened that if Congress doesn't cooperate with his latest brainstorms, he will get his way by using executive orders.

The people of this country will soon rue the day they voted to re-elect Obama in 2012. At some point they'll learn that his "progressive" way, the 1930s taxing-and-spending-and-regulating way, is not the answer.

We're in for four more years of slow growth, high unemployment rates, higher taxes and rising prices. Not to mention more government meddling in every aspect of our lives.

The impaired vision of Obama and his party is wrecking the economy, crippling the ability of our youth to get jobs and causing a decline in respect for America overseas.

My side - the conservative Republican side - is out of power. We don't have the White House and the Senate. The courts rule against us most of the time. And the mainstream media are still in the tank for Obama.

All we can do for now is watch Obama's Humpty Dumpty America as it falls off the wall and breaks into a million pieces.

At the end of the game, it'll be up to the Republican Party, the conservatives, to put the country back together. I only hope we can live long enough to do it.

- Michael Reagan, son of President Ronald Reagan, provides his "Making Sense" columns to Cagle Cartoons, Inc., which is the exclusive distributor of them (Reagan@caglecartoons.com).